A Year in the Making

This past year, I've been working on illustrations for a book of poetry and now it is published and ready for sale. It has been quite a long process and a lot of hard work from everyone involved.

In October 2016, my Auntie Caroline and Uncle Jonathan came to stay with us for a few days and, as with any guest, we all got our hobbies/interests/work put on show. I showed some of my college artwork including the book I made for the Narrative Image Making unit on "The Mermaid". Auntie Caroline liked my style of illustrations so much that she asked me if I would be interested in illustrating some of her poems.

The poems all have religious themes, as my aunt is a minister down in Dorset. It was sometimes challenging to find the right balance between implying and showing the religious imagery. The poems included 15 Stations of the Cross (basically the Easter story), and 18 poems on other topics.

The following is from "Reflections of the Heart". Text copyright © Rev Caroline M. Chichester 2017. Illustration copyright © Catherine R. L. Bird 2017.

Here is a selection of the illustrations I did (and then overlayed the poem):

Spiral

This illustration is for the poem "Spiral", which is about life and death. I decided to use 'Harrington' as the typeface for this poem as I thought it worked well with both the poem and the illustration. To start off with, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for this illustration. After discussing it and trying a few ideas, I did this sunset seascape which also includes a church, graveyard and (as mentioned in the poem) lambs. I decided to make the sea and sky a prominent part of the illustration to reflect the idea of eternity that the poem talks about.

A Cry of Anguish

One of the longer, more thought-provoking poems is "A Cry of Anguish". This poem is part of the section "A  Time of  Trial" which was written when my aunt had cancer.

To help convey the more serious time of the poem, I decided to use 'Viner Hand ITC' as the typeface for this poem.

The poem talks about butterfly wings and footprints in the sand. I used the sunbeams and the butterfly to continue the idea of the fragility of hope. The last line of the poem is "...God is there." which I wanted to show with a few large footprints disappearing under the waves alongside the footprints of the lonely figure on the beach.

One of my favourite parts of this illustration is the contrast between the bright colours of the butterfly and the grey scale background.

The Joy of God

Most of the elements in this illustration are based on plant symbolism relating to the poem, for example 'oats' meaning 'music' and 'delphinium' meaning 'joy'. I found it really interesting finding out about plant symbolism.

I chose 'Curlz MT' as the typeface for this poem as the baseline waves up and down, creating a sense of joy and movement as though the poem itself was dancing!

The poem mentions sunset and I decided to do reflections on the sea as a background for the poem. This is the last poem in the book and I think the reflections link back to the title of the book.


The 'Stations':

Station 5: Pilate

For Station 5, I decided to do the inside of Pilate's house, showing the jug and bowl of water mentioned in the poem. I also tried to make the tree trunk cross-shaped to continue the theme of the Cross/Easter story. I used the view from the window to show that the town was "an outpost of empire".

This is one of my favourite illustrations from the book because I feel like I'm in the room, looking out the window towards the horizon.

Station 8: Simon of Cyrene

Station 8 ends with a question for the reader - "Would you do the same?". I thought this was very powerful and I wanted to emphasise it by having the soldier point at the reader.

Station 9: Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem

The illustration for Station 9 was partly inspired by some of my Higher art which also had a reflection in a close-up of an eye.  I think having an illustration within the illustration makes it more interesting and powerful.

The hair in this illustration uses a similar texture as the wood grain in some of the other illustrations and so continues the theme/idea.

Most of the 'Stations' have a continuing theme of wood somewhere in the illustrations which helps connect them to each other. Auntie Caroline and I decided to use 'Tempus sans' as the typeface for all of the 'Stations' to tie them together more.

If you're interested in buying the book, please contact me for further details.